Software Flash

Saturday, October 01, 2005

Cabos exchanges files through the Gnutell-network and is partly based on programs ass LimeWire and Acquisition. The simple interface supports more languages and has also integration with iTunes. On the Japanese pages of Sourceforge is version 0.5.5 appeared.

To run Windows programs also under other operating systems, a few years ago they are started to develop the program "Wine" and meanwhile this is already running on Linux and FreeBSD. The developers are still working on it but the result is this version with number 20050930.

This are the release notes:

This is release 20050930 of Wine, a free implementation of Windows on Unix. This is still a developers only release. There are many bugs and unimplemented features. Most applications still do not work correctly.

Wednesday, September 28, 2005

Patchou has released a new version of Messenger Plus!, version 3.60.144. This is an add-on for MSN Messenger with which you can rename your contact, draw up text and leave messages when you are away.This version supports MSN Messenger 7.5.

Obviously, this version is now 100% compatible with MSN Messenger 7.5. Oneof the main things that has been fixed for this version of Messenger is thedetection of contact names changes (thus fixing bugs with custom names, floatingcontact windows, ...).

Brand new feature: Tabbed Chats!

The Tabbed Chats feature groups some or all of your chat windows into onesingle window. A group bar is then displayed to switch from one chat to theother. This feature is available in MSN Messenger 6.0 and above.

Each chat can be accessed with one button in the group bar. When newmessages are sent to a grouped chat that is not active, the group bar buttonflashes. When possible, the chat is also brought to front (various internalvariables control how button flashes and when chats are put on top).

You can browse your tabbed chats with two sets of keys: Ctrl+PageUp /Ctrl+PageDown and Ctrl+Tab / Ctrl+Shift+Tab. The later can be disabled with theAllowGroupCtrlTab registry setting if you want to keep Ctrl+Tab to insert tabcharacters in your messages.

You can use Ctrl+Alt+Tab to go to the next flashing chat or to restore theoriginal chat window when no more flashing windows are present. This shortcut isvery useful when talking to a lot of people.

Left clicking on a chat button puts the chat on front, middle clicking on achat closes it and right clicking displays a context menu with several options.Ctrl+Left Click detaches a chat from a group.

Middle clicking on an arrow button normally scroll the chat buttons by afull page. However, when a chat that is not currently displayed in the barflashes, the appropriate arrow button flashes too and middle clicking on anarrow button at that time brings you directly to the flashing window.

The group bar can be displayed vertically on top or horizontally on the leftside.

The size of the buttons is dynamic when the bar is horizontal and fixed whenit is vertical. In both cases, the preferences panel has an option to change thewidth of the buttons. If the bar is horizontal, the width is used as a minimumrequired width instead of a fixed one.

Of course, an option exists to automatically group all your chats when theyare displayed by Messenger. After installation, if several chat windows areopened, Messenger Plus! automatically asks once if you want to enable thisoption or not.

You can drag&drop files and text on group buttons the same way you candrag&drop stuff on floating windows.

Chat windows that are displaying Messenger Activities (such as games) keeptheir own size and don't affect the size of the other chats in the group.

The tabbed chats have their own set of settings, available in thepreferences, to suit the customization needs of most people.

You can close all the chats of a group by holding Ctrl when exiting thewindow (clicking on the X button). This behavior can be inversed with the"GroupCtrlCloseAll" registry setting.

When a grouped chat contains unread messages, Messenger Plus! automaticallyswitches chat windows after some delay if the group is not currently active.This delay can be changed with the "GroupAutoSwitchDelay" registry setting.

Because of several technical differences, the tabbed chat feature is notavailable in RTL versions of Messenger (Arabic and Hebrew).

The new custom sound feature continues to be very popular so some things init have been improved:

A language can now be assigned to every sound in the Add Sound Wizard.

You can assign a language to your existing sounds by going in the SoundProperty window (click "Edit Sound..." in the library window). You areencouraged to send your modification to the server (see below).

A new "Update Server" button has been added in the Sound Property window.This button allows you to send the sound to the server so that its informationcan be updated. Sounds are normally sent only once to the server (in a givenperiod of time) which can cause listing errors to be maintained for a long time.If you notice a name, category or language error for one of your sounds, justcorrect it and hit this new button: anybody who will download the soundafterwards will have the corrected information.

The Random Sound window now allows to specify a desired language. Pleasegive this option some time before it really starts to be useful as existingsounds need to be re-uploaded by everybody to the servers with the languageinformation set.

The sound ID displayed in the Sound Properties window can now be selectedand copied easily (for use in commands for example).

Added a tooltip for the selection bar in the Add Sound Wizard so thateveryone knows that double-clicking the bar opens a different selection window.

Getting new random sounds is now a little faster.

Temporary files generated by the Sound Wizard are now properly deleted everytime.

Importing a sound pack by opening a link in IE now always works (no need tosave the file first).

No "Messenger Plus! Extras" menu is displayed for "mobile number only"contacts.

Added "SideBarColor" registry setting for people who use skins.

There's no more room in the preferences for the new features! there arealready 25 sections in the preferences window and it's been some time alreadythat I've been bothered by this problem. To accommodate the new Tabbed Chatspreferences section, "Commands & Tags" has been renamed "Commands &Keys" and moved in "Message Helpers". To make room for it, the "Text Recall"section had to go. The feature still exists but the options attached to it werenot that useful for most people (they are still internally supported if youupdate from an old version though).

Added a link in the Chat Logging preferences section to go to the encryptionsection.

The "Action message formatting" option has been removed from the preferences(the registry settings are still used though, if you're updating from a previousversion).

Thanks to user feedback and because of the need for a user agreement forMessenger Plus! itself, the setup of Messenger Plus! has been completelyre-thought, once again.

The one main concern reported by users since the last modifications wasclarity. This new setup intends to definitively fix that problem.

The installation of the sponsor program is now asked directly on the secondpage of the setup. The text displayed there is short and to the point,describing what the sponsor is, the fact that it's adware and insisting thatit's optional.

No option regarding the sponsor is checked by default (just as before but itcan't hurt to mention it again).

The sponsor license agreement is not displayed above the installation choiceanymore (which was the reason of most previous complaints). Instead, it ispresented to the user separately if and only if the user chooses to install theads. This means that in order to install the sponsor, you now have to accept ittwice, first by selecting "Install the sponsor program" and secondly by clickingon "I accept the terms of the Sponsor's License Agreement".

The sponsor agreement window now displays a bigger and brighter screenshotof the search bar installed (not by much but still). Also, the fact that thisscreenshot and the agreement itself are presented in a different window, biggerthan the main window itself, brings more clarity to the setup, preventing toomuch information to be displayed on a single screen and getting more attentionfrom the user.

The third screen of the setup now displays the new Messenger Plus! terms ofuse. Every user must accept them before proceeding with the installation. Thisway, the overall setup looks much more "standard". I know there will be a periodof adaptation for every people to understand that the last page of the setup nowdisplays a license agreement for Messenger Plus! itself and not its sponsor butthat's a problem I'm willing to assume.

Messenger is not automatically started at the end of a silent installationanymore.

I'll watch for your feedback regarding this new setup and I'll make thenecessary adjustments if you deem it necessary. I want the setup to be as goodas possible, once and for all.

The auto-update window doesn't appear to frozen for long when the MessengerPlus! web site can't be reached.

The file sharing feature of Messenger Plus! was not that useful as is so ithas been redesigned and file triggers have been added to it:

For each file entry you can set a different trigger (IRC like). A trigger isa message preceded by ! that, when sent by a contact, will automatically sendthe specified file on your behalf.

File triggers can have many uses. For example, if you just had found anddownloaded a great program/music/video, you could advertise a trigger for it inyour personal message.

An option (off by default) allows contacts to send a !listfiles trigger toget the list of every file you are currently sharing with triggers.

A simple flood protection is enforced by Messenger Plus! rejecting newrequests that are sent too quickly.

I know some of you will request a password for this feature but in a way,they are already implicitly supported: a trigger can have up to 100 charactersand can include spaces. So if you create a trigger "!myfile thepassword" you canadvertise for it as "!myfile ".

For security reasons, file triggers do not work in chats with multiplecontacts.

A /fileshare command has been added to access the file sharing panel.

Remember that Messenger is not a software designed for mass automatic filesharing. Messenger Plus! does not bypass any of the native protections ofMessenger which means for example that if you are using Messenger 7, some fileextensions will be forbidden (you can use the StuffPlug plugin or WindowsMessenger to avoid that problem). Also, please remember that Messengerautomatically limits the number of simultaneous file transfers, Messenger Plus!cannot do anything about it either.

Currently, up to 12 different files can be shared through thismethod.

The action of playing custom emotion sounds is now logged in the MessengerPlus! chat logs.

The "Messenger Plus! Extras" menu for groups is back in Messenger 7 (usefulto block/unblock groups). Note that if the width of your contact list is toosmall, the menu may not appear.

A new plugin function has been added called "AddEventEntry". This functionallows plugins to add custom entries in the event viewer and event log file ofMessenger Plus!. The version sent by the Initialize() function is now 7.

No more logging problems when an email begins with a system reserved wordsuch as "com1".

Two registry settings have been added, "AttachToWinMsg" and "AttachToMsnMsg"which allow users to ask Messenger Plus! not to add its functionalities ineither Windows Messenger or MSN Messenger.

An important bug has been fixed that could prevent Messenger Plus!, in veryspecific occasions, to not attach to Messenger or a chat window properly.

Added a link to the sounds.msgplus.net page in the Sound Library window.This will help people get access to statistics and new sounds.

Messenger Plus! now recognizes personal messages (Windows 2000/XP only). Fornow, this means that personal message changes are logged in different placeslike in the event viewer. Note that music name changes are not logged for spacereasons (too many of those can be received, it would fill up the event logpretty quickly). More support for personal messages will be added in a futureupdate.

Microsoft has released the second Service Pack for Office 2003. The update is available in 2 possibility's. The first is the client install and will be enough for most people. The second is the full install and is necessary for people who don't have an original product CD or if the client install doesn't work.

Adobe has brought out a new version of Camera Raw. This is a handy plugin for CS2 and Photoshop Elements 3.0, with which you can open RAW-files directly without first to convert to an other redivision. The software isn't new, there's only support added for a few cameras. Sof if you already work with this plugin, you don't need to update.

After several months and 9 betaversions there is the successor of version 2.3. With this program you can read messages out of newsgroups and download files on Usenet. NewsLeecher can download from several servers at the same time, it has support for yEnc-code.

The 3.0 final changelog:- We've just setup a forum poll for future features to be included in NewsLeecher. Please cast your vote!- Speed improvement when reading and writing NewsLeecher settings data. The interface will be more responsive in various places now.- Small bugfixes.

Mozilla has released a new version of Mozilla Suite, 1.7.12. Downloads for the different operating systems can be found here. You can read the complete release notes here.

This are the most important:

- Fix for a potential buffer overflow vulnerability when loading a hostname with all soft-hyphens- Fix to prevent URLs passed from external programs from being parsed by the shell (Linux only)- Fix to prevent a crash when loading a Proxy Auto-Config (PAC) script that uses an "eval" statement- Fix to restore InstallTrigger.getVersion() for Extension authors- Fix a crash in mail when stopping a search and then searching again- Other stability and security fixes

Monday, September 26, 2005

MozBackup 1.4.3 is a program to make a backup of the profiles and data in the following programs: Mozilla Firefox, Mozilla Thunderbird, Mozilla Suite and Netscape. So it's possible to save e-mails, bookmarks, contactpersons, saved passwords and more.

Changelog of MozBackup 1.4.3- Add: Support for SeaMonkey 1.0a- Add: You can specify output file format now. See backup.ini.- Add: Users needn't run MozBackup many times when they need backup many profiles.- Add: You can specify output directory for backups for every application.- Add: You can select program or profile by doubleclick.- Add: Backup of bookmarks backup.- Fix: Bug with password handling when you restore a backup.

Totalidea brought us the new version of Tweak-XP Pro.. You can tweak Windows XP with this program. For example: clean up the register, block pop-ups, get detailed systeminformation, create a RAM-drive, repair zip-files,...

Changelog

- Service release- Fixing a few minor issues- Several code optimizations

Can you imagine world with out computers? Our tasks, businesses, communication and what not will be mashed. Right!? To run software we use various kinds of softwares to ease our workloads.Every business to using computers to enhance their profit would definitely look for the best software they can get, and for that they pay huge amount of money. Well they are not doing any kind foolishness, but, meanwhile there are free softwares available that can be used as a substitute of the costly one.

Yes, I am talking about free or lower prized software easily available on net, which are also dressed up with almost the same facilities, provided some the major software companies.

Ignorance leads people to spend massive amount on software, as there are substitute for almost every single category of applications, which is being used on a daily basis.

There are lots of programs out there that can do the job almost without spending a single penny. However, people think that only popular/branded products such as from Microsoft, Symantec, Adobe and many more are significant.

In fact, our minds are not set to use other software made by small or middle sized companies, as it in state if it's free that it's not that good enough for them.

Hundreds of Office Suite, Antivirus Software, shareware, Firewalls, System Maintenance Tools, CD Burning Software and freeware files are accessible on net, but because we acknowledge only major products.

You can easily find website, providing free downloads for software of nearly every kind. Just use "free software download" for your search and you will receive list of numerous websites. This article is my sincere effort to stimulate people that there are several high-quality free programs out there on the internet that can do the same task as a commercially available program but without that expensive price tag.